The Descendants of John Heywood of Concord, Massachusetts

Pages 394-398

Reverend Addison Brown was born at New Ipswich, New Hampshire, March 11, 1799, the last year of the eighteenth century; his education, life and spirit were emphatically of, and kept pace with, the nineteenth. His collegiate and theological education were furnished by Harvard College and the Cambridge Theological School. A graduate of the class of 1826, and of the class of 1831 from the theological school, he became minister of the newly established Unitarian Church of this village in 1832. As its first minister, he continued in its pastorate nearly fourteen years, and on dissolving his official connection remained, with brief interruptions, until his death, one of its most devoted members.

His connection with the Brattleboro Unitarian Church terminated December 1, 1845. Though continuing to preach as occasion offered during the greater part of the remainder of his life, Mr. Brown formed no new pastoral connection. With the deepest interest in the advancement of the general good, which he always held to be the great aim of the church and the ministry, he turned his attention to other methods of promoting it. The cause of education especially interested him. To it he gave increasingly his thought and energies. The condition of the public schools in this region excited his deepest concern. He saw they were far behind what the public need and the possibilities of the case required; he sought to remodel the schools on a higher and more effective plan, and he aimed to bring a more direct relation between the parents of the pupils and the teachers and schools entrusted with their education. In 1841 he had the gratification of seeing a response to his efforts, in the introduction into the schools of the graded system. He labored to the end of his public life to depen the sense of responsibility in the public mind for the efficiency of the schools. He held office as superintendent of the schools in Windham County from 1846 until that office was abolished, after which, for several years, he acted as superintendent of the schools in the town of Brattleboro. He also conducted a Boarding and Day School for Young Ladies in his home.

With the press he became connected in 1862, when Doctor Charles Cummings, summoned from the editorial chair to the battlefield, relinquished the charge of The Vermont Phoenix. Mr. Brown became editor and one of the proprietors, which post he held until March, 1871, when failing health compelled his retirement. Loyally, in the bitter days of the Civil War, he stood by the flag of the Union; that he ceaselessly identified, and toiled to induce others to identify, the fortunes and significance of that flag with the broadest and most generous ideas of liberty and the rights of man, his works attest. He realized the importance of his post as editor of a newspaper, and sought, in every way that opened before him, to make th ejournal in his control powerful for good.

With a special interest he advocated the cause of woman's elevation. He set no bounds to his claims of right for her. To her largest aspirations he lent a faithful, helping voice. Not alone her pleading for a higher education, not alone her assertion of right and opportunity to labor in other spheres than those heretofore at her command, not alone her right to the possession and use of her earnings, but, besides and beyond, her right to enter on every sphere to which she felt a divine call, a native fitness, and to the enjoyment of full political rights, found in him a devoted, and, so far as was possible to a mind so finely balanced and so judicial as his, an enthusiastic advocate. Indeed, wherever oppression was, there was he to be found exposing and withstanding it. In the days when slavery's night brooded over the land, he stood one of the lights of liberty that prophesied the coming of the dawn. And the slavery of strong drink found no more steadfast enemy than he. In his own person, in his home, in all his public teaching and writing, he was the advocate and the exemplar of temperance.

His life was devoted chiefly to others' good. He believed in personal righteousness rather than in profession of piety. To do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with God, formed his great aim.

He married December 13, 1832, Miss Ann E. Wetherbee of New Ipswich. He died in May, 1872.

Mrs. Brown was born in Boston August 26, 1807, the daughter of Abijah and Betsey Wilder Wetherbee. Her grandfather, Paul Wetherbee, was a minuteman of the Revolution, and her great-great-grandfather, Joseph Wilder, was a judge of the Massachusetts courts. In her early childhood the Wetherbee and Wilder families moved to New Ipswich, New Hampshire, where they and their descendants built up the neighborhood known as Wilder Village. Mrs. Brown grew up in New Ipswich, receiving her education in the district school, attending afterwards New Ipswich Academy and private schools in Keene, New Hampshire, and Groton, Massachusetts. She taught in a private school in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, and in the common schools in New Ipswich.

Her marriage to Mr. Brown took place at her father's house in New Ipswich, and was solemnized by Reverend Abiel Abbott of Peterboro, one of the early ministers of the Unitarian denomination. The next day, December 14, they drove to Brattleboro by way of Keene and Chesterfield, and it is a record of the time that the weather was then mild and pleasant and there was no snow on the ground.

Mrs. Brown's long life was one of ceaseless activity and of constant devotion to her family and friends. Until past her eightieth year she did her household work and had charge of all her affairs. To the last her mind was clear and she retained her interest in all the intellectual pursuits which had been the great source of enjoyment of her whole life. THere has probably been no person in Brattleboro who read so constantly all of the world's best literature, all current literature worth the while, and kept so fully in touch with the whole trend of modern thought -- in religion and thology, in politics, in science, in history, and on all social questions -- as did Mrs. Brown. She was especially versed in astronomy and was an expert botanist, possessing an inate gladness in the wild flowers, reading with ease in Latin, German and French. She had true artistic perception. In her earlier years she sketched from nature with skill and taste and instructed her pupils in this art.

During the last half-dozen years of confinement to her room Mrs. Brown's enjoyment of all these pursuits continued unabated and she was constantly in touch with all affairs in the village and the world outside. The final weakness and decline of old age came only during the summer preceding her death in the autumn. Within ten days of her death she sat up in bed to read the village and daily papers, and on the day of her death she asked in an interval of consciousness for news of the elections and expressed her pleasure that Mr. Hughes had been elected governor of New York. She died November 7, 1906, aged ninety-nine years and three months.

Along with her intellectual attainments and capability for affairs, Mrs. Brown possessed a bright, strong, sunny nature, sweet and good to the core, which made companionship with her a delight, and chased away all the minor cares and worries of life. The women who were her pupils fifty years before, no less than her own family and her immediate neighbors and friends of later years, recalled all these qualities with gratitude and paid to this good, true life a heartfelt tribute of thankfulness.

Mrs. Brown was born of one of the pioneer Unitarian families of New England, and the joy and strength of her inner life were in the breadth and freedom of that faith; and so long as her strength permitted, she was a constant attendant on the services of the Brattleboro church and a participant in all its activities.